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I'm currently living in Hamilton, Ontario and as I'm finishing off my last semester in my undergraduate degree, I've been feeling as though I need to explore more of this city before I leave it. Most people don't know this but Hamilton actually has so many waterfalls sprinkled throughout the city and I'm on a mission to see as many of them as I can before I graduate. Two weekends ago I visited Tew's Falls with Daniel and even though it turned out to be a super foggy day, it kind of made it an even cooler, eerie ambiance. He recently got himself a drone (DJI Phantom 3) and I was so excited to get to try it out with him. As cool as Hamilton waterfalls can be, we really can't wait to get to try the drone out on our next travel adventure--wherever that may be.

I've always prided myself in being Brazilian and having lived there for the beginning years of my life, and although I will always be that culturally, my body is straight up Canadian. Spending the day in Havana only affirmed this sad, sad truth. I guess 14 years of having the privilege of air conditioning at home, school, stores etc has poorly conditioned my body into not having to try so hard to adjust to extreme temperatures. This theory would explain why my body failed miserably to keep its chill-literally-in the humid Havana heat. I don't think I lasted thirty minutes walking around before the perspiration got REAL and melted all of my mascara/eyeliner into my eyeballs for what was both the most disgusting and aggressively painful experiences of the trip. By this point I was a charming mixture of sweat, tears, and dizziness stumbling on the cobble-stone begging for water. We were finally able to buy a bottle and ask the kind salesman for an accompanying napkin for ze' crying girl and it was all uphill from there. Stay hydrated, kids. And don't wear makeup in Cuba.

Aside from wishing I was being rolled around the city inside a freezer on wheels, Havana was really beautiful. We had lunch east of the Fortress, and beautiful place called Hostal El Cañonazo. The food and atmosphere was seriously so good, I definitely recommend it. It was also around there where we saw the world's largest cigar and were lucky enough to meet the man whose life work is to roll record-breaking long cigars--and then got to pick some up to take home ourselves.

The city, and Cuba itself, has a lot of history and culture that is portrayed throughout its streets, colorful buildings, old-fashioned cars and people. It really did feel as if you were travelling back in time, as they say.

There's nothing like counting down the days to a vacation and slowly letting go of all the stress and demands of your day-to-day work week. I took a trip down to Cuba with Daniel and my family this past August and we did exactly that--stepped back and relaxed for an entire week. I had never done a one-week, all inclusive resort kind of trip before and I must say I was really impressed with the value for money that that kind of trip entails. For roughly $800 per person, we had a direct flight, 7 night stay at a 4-star hotel, all you can eat and drink, pool side bar, access to a variety of restaurants, short walk to a private beach. all-day entertainment and equipment rentals. It was so much fun! After breakfast we would head to the beach early enough to grab beach chairs and alternate between tanning and swimming in the ocean. Once the unbearable midday sun sprung up we would switch to the pool for drinks under the bar and then go back to try and catch the sunset (which was always extremely cloudy unfortunately!).

It only makes sense that as an affordable, all inclusive resort, not everything is to the highest quality and I found that especially true with the bar and so I mustered a fool-proof plan to minimize disappointment. We tried as many different drinks as we saw in the first day and concluded that the syrup-y drinks tasted awful but the beers and mojitos were on point. And there you have it: find what you like and stick with it. Another relatively annoying aspect was that while there was wifi, you had to pay for it per hour and was only available at the lobby and not in your room. It was good in the sense that being disconnected made it easier to not think about the real world, but it also meant I had to pre-edit all my pictures and then mass upload to instagram.

We did so many fun activities like snorkeling in middle of the ocean, sail on a catamaran, shoot targets (terribly, on my part) and participate in various games by the pool for a chance to win bottles of rum- which my MOM won actually! We also took a trip down to the city of Varadero which was a very cute small town filled with gift shops and old cars and we had great authentic Cuban meals in various restaurants. We also took a one-day, private guided tour in Havana, (which I will feature as its own post very soon) and on our way there we took a pit stop at Puente de Bacunayagua where we had the best Piña Colada in Cuba, and I must say, it definitely lived up to its reputation!

luanalune

WHO?

Hey! I'm Lu—a twenty-three year old Brazilian.. Just trying to explore as much of this tiny speck in the universe as I possible can. I'm a lover of leather jackets, matte lipstick, and a good croissant.